Similar to tag clouds, where tags grow in size the more often they are being used, this version called bigspy from the Digg Labs called of digged articles displays the respective article headline in a bigger sized font the more people digged it. Check the "all activity" section to get a clear picture of the concept.
The other lab products are interesting as well, but I don't find them as visually intuitive, more playful than useful really.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
Friday, 20 April 2007
What? Only 669 kbps ? - Yeah, I just stumbled on it.
Two new nice tools I, well, stumbled upon. The first one: StumbleUpon. A recommendation engine somewhat similar to digg, running via its own toolbar. In setting this up one selects topic of interest (e.g. books, news, internet tools, movies, robotics etc.), downloads the toolbar as an .exe and off it goes. The space at the top of my browserscreen is now becoming a bit crowded, with the address field, the menu-items, the Yahoo toolbar, the "Links" row, two delicious buttons that take up a row of their own, the Google toolbar and now the StumbleUpon toolbar. Somebody should come up with some sort of dynamic toolbar integrator that condenses different toolbars into single buttons, and displays them on-the-fly or something.
Anyhow, the toolbar has a "Stumble" button that calls up websites from your declared areas of interest - and that have been given a thumbs-up voting by other users. You can then vote on it for yourself. And it works: the results I received so far very actually really good, most of them got a "thumbs-up" voting from me.
One site that I will definitely use more often is a network speedtest. I thought I had a 2Mbps connection - but oh well, theory and practice.
Well, according to this speedtest I am actually at 1822 kbps . I guess it depends on which server they ping to determine downlink / uplink speed - surely it is also a factor of network traffic on my broadband providers network, but does is vary that much ?
Have not tried the video feature yet, but that's next.
Anyhow, the toolbar has a "Stumble" button that calls up websites from your declared areas of interest - and that have been given a thumbs-up voting by other users. You can then vote on it for yourself. And it works: the results I received so far very actually really good, most of them got a "thumbs-up" voting from me.
One site that I will definitely use more often is a network speedtest. I thought I had a 2Mbps connection - but oh well, theory and practice.
Well, according to this speedtest I am actually at 1822 kbps . I guess it depends on which server they ping to determine downlink / uplink speed - surely it is also a factor of network traffic on my broadband providers network, but does is vary that much ?
Have not tried the video feature yet, but that's next.
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
Snapshots: context is content
In the past months I quite enjoyed when I came across websites that had the Snapshot site preview implemented, that opens a small pop-up window with a miniature preview of the target website, when a user moves the cursor over a link. So when they announced today that they have extended this approach to further contextual concepts such as wikipedia-definitions, stockquotes, movies etc. I decided to give it a go myself.
The setup via the snap.com site the is very simple, well designed user interface. This blog-URL was identified and the instructions automatically provided specifically to a Blogger blog. All that is required is to copy/paste a Java Script code snipped into the HTML header of the blog template. This snippet references a .js file, which then does all the magic.
Conceptually I think it really creates value to the user to be able to preview the destination of any given link, and to decide whether it looks like a worthwhile site to access. The additional snapshot-contexts follow the trend that tabbed-browsing, widgets and other tools set, which is to make the browsing experience ever more integrated. The more relevant information is accessible on-demand in a convenient way in a single place, the more seamless the user-experience will be, the quicker the relevant information will be available and therefore processed.
Cool stuff.
The setup via the snap.com site the is very simple, well designed user interface. This blog-URL was identified and the instructions automatically provided specifically to a Blogger blog. All that is required is to copy/paste a Java Script code snipped into the HTML header of the blog template. This snippet references a .js file, which then does all the magic.
Conceptually I think it really creates value to the user to be able to preview the destination of any given link, and to decide whether it looks like a worthwhile site to access. The additional snapshot-contexts follow the trend that tabbed-browsing, widgets and other tools set, which is to make the browsing experience ever more integrated. The more relevant information is accessible on-demand in a convenient way in a single place, the more seamless the user-experience will be, the quicker the relevant information will be available and therefore processed.
Cool stuff.
Mobile Monday London
Last night's Mobile Monday featured a set of interesting presentations around location based services. First up was SeekerWireless, who provide a localization service that - according to the speaker - in terms of accuracy is half-way between GPS and Cell-ID based systems. I would like to find out more about what technology they employ (I did not understand how they use SMS) and also would like to see the system in action (there was no live demo yesterday). But I also was not clear that accuracy in locating a user is still a major issue in the LBS world. Specifically a slide outlining the various restrictions Nokia defines in the N95 GPS manual I felt made the drawbacks of GPS very clear.
Next up was LocoMatrix, outdoor games. The speaker was a sympathetic, entertaining if somewhat timid guy, with an obvious passion (which I totally respect): to help getting kids outdoors and moving around, in order to tackle isolation and obesity. Just not sure I was convinced by the games that were presented, I don't see that they can compete with the WIIs and Playstations / PSPs and indeed more and more advanced mobile games of this world. But cudos for the cause.
Trackaphone offers a service that helps tracking people, with apparently a focus on security-related use cases. They have a "red button" emergency concept, where upon acttivation of that feature a SMS/notification is sent to a number of defined recipients and the device starts recording what is going on ( I believe audio only). Living in a high-crime rate area of London I welcome any such technology, but wouldn't want this button to be pressed involuntarily while the phone is in my pocket without the keypad being locked.
Buddyping is one of those LBS products that I personally feel can play a part in LBS living up to its long unfulfilled hype. I don't believe that many users will look for the famous "pizza" place nearby, or be happy about receiving dozens of promotional SMS as they walk around (the Starbucks scenario). However, keeping track of your buddies with a Twitter component I think has huge potential. Which brand / product eventually establishes itself in that area remains to be seen, but I am positive that this kind of service will become exponentially more popular in the near future.
A neat tool for joggers, skiiers etc. to keep track of where they have been going in what time, distance, with a great maps integration is SportsDo. Definitely want to check it out, although need to check if I have a device they support and also - more importantly - need to get my lazy butt moving, and start running on a regular basis again.
The final presentation was by m-spatial, which again I think I need to play around with more - the demo showed how different content sources are integrated for any local search query. Another feature they presented was a tool that allows the user to highlight an address on a PC-desktop webpage, and then receive a link via SMS that takes the user to a mobile page with additional information about that location.
Next up was LocoMatrix, outdoor games. The speaker was a sympathetic, entertaining if somewhat timid guy, with an obvious passion (which I totally respect): to help getting kids outdoors and moving around, in order to tackle isolation and obesity. Just not sure I was convinced by the games that were presented, I don't see that they can compete with the WIIs and Playstations / PSPs and indeed more and more advanced mobile games of this world. But cudos for the cause.
Trackaphone offers a service that helps tracking people, with apparently a focus on security-related use cases. They have a "red button" emergency concept, where upon acttivation of that feature a SMS/notification is sent to a number of defined recipients and the device starts recording what is going on ( I believe audio only). Living in a high-crime rate area of London I welcome any such technology, but wouldn't want this button to be pressed involuntarily while the phone is in my pocket without the keypad being locked.
Buddyping is one of those LBS products that I personally feel can play a part in LBS living up to its long unfulfilled hype. I don't believe that many users will look for the famous "pizza" place nearby, or be happy about receiving dozens of promotional SMS as they walk around (the Starbucks scenario). However, keeping track of your buddies with a Twitter component I think has huge potential. Which brand / product eventually establishes itself in that area remains to be seen, but I am positive that this kind of service will become exponentially more popular in the near future.
A neat tool for joggers, skiiers etc. to keep track of where they have been going in what time, distance, with a great maps integration is SportsDo. Definitely want to check it out, although need to check if I have a device they support and also - more importantly - need to get my lazy butt moving, and start running on a regular basis again.
The final presentation was by m-spatial, which again I think I need to play around with more - the demo showed how different content sources are integrated for any local search query. Another feature they presented was a tool that allows the user to highlight an address on a PC-desktop webpage, and then receive a link via SMS that takes the user to a mobile page with additional information about that location.
Saturday, 14 April 2007
Art in Second Life
Interesting article about a new art-magazine (in print form) that illustrates / catalogues art being produced in Second Life. Apparently there are already 200 galleries with Second Life. The publisher of this magazine also argues that every avatar, as a creative, unique and novel expression of the person creating that avatar, can be seen as art. Apparently SL art is already being sold (IBM is named as one of the biggest buyers), despite the infinite reproducability of digital art - with the lack of scarcity prices will not increase.
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